No, Obamacare And The Affordable Care Act Are Not Different Things

Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are, in fact, one and the same. But a staggering number of people seem to be unaware of this.

As the great H. L. Mencken never actually said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Television has been proving that point for years, often through pointed man-on-the-street segments that show just how little we, the people, know about, well, everything.

The latest evidence comes courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live, which set out Tuesday to find out which health-care system more Americans support: Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act. The twist, of course, is that these are two names for the very same system, one that Republicans have pledged to repeal under President-elect Donald Trump—despite the fact that doing so could leave millions of Americans uninsured, and that it’s still unclear how Trump and company plan to replaceBarack Obama’s signature achievement.

It’s possible—probable, even—that Kimmel cherry-picked the responses his correspondent garnered, tossing out those canny passersby who saw through his trick question. Given everything else, though, it also seems likely that a large swath of the public really does think Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are different things—likely for the same reason as Kimmel’s first respondent: “I’m not the biggest fan of Obama, so I don’t support him in the Obama things that he’s got going on,” she says. “I’m actually really excited for President-elect Donald Trump.”

The biggest gut-punch of all? Kimmel asked this exact same question to people on the street nearly four years ago—and got similarly uninformed responses.

Learn more about what happens if the Affordable Care Act is overturned here, or check out this viral Facebook post on how hard it was for many Americans to get health coverage before the ACA.